After escaping twice from maximum security prisons in Mexico – in 2001 and 2015 – Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán became the most wanted man in the world. His definitive capture, which explains why he is currently serving a life sentence of more than 30 years in the ADX Florence maximum security federal prison (Colorado), had a cinematic development and outcome, the kind of operation that sooner or later would attract the interest of the audiovisual industry.
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“I remember perfectly what I was doing and where I was at the moment the news came out that Joaquín Guzmán Loera, ‘El Chapo’, had been captured, at the beginning of 2016. I have it very clear,” Alfonso Herrera (Mexico City, 1983) tells Culto. He himself emphasizes: “All Mexicans have more or less had it on their radar since the moment he was first arrested in the early 90s.”
Those memories have resurfaced due to the global release of La captura, the film based on the last arrest of the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and his security chief, “El Cholo Iván.” A great audience success since its debut on Netflix last Friday the 21st (it is the most successful non-English spoken film of the year on the streaming platform), it has brought attention back to a key episode in the recent history of the authorities’ fight against organized crime.
Herrera was captivated by the approach taken by the film directed by Chava Cartas, a thriller that tries to delve into the adverse scenario faced by Arturo Carmona (Alfonso Herrera) and Héctor Rosales (Noé Hernández), two police officers who stop a car reported stolen during a patrol shift in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The duo discovers that inside are Guzmán (Héctor Kotsifakis) and his hitman (Juan Pablo Cruz García), and they must deal with bribes, threats, and doubts arising between them and towards other police and authorities.
From his perspective, this is not a “narco story”, that catalog of productions based on lurid cases that always cause controversy and has expanded in the streaming era.
“The way they find him, the angle from which the story is told… It seemed like a fantastic story. It was like winning the lottery twice,” says the actor, who accepted the proposal and filmed the feature after taking a break following the end of filming the series La casa de los espíritus in Chile.
Carmona, his role in the fiction, is an ordinary federal officer – burdened by debts and other headaches – who ends up detaining a figure he sees as the “devil himself”. Rosales is no more extraordinary. Both characters are based on the real police officers who responded with integrity and who have lived anonymously since 2016, as they entered a protection program.
Herrera recalls that it was common for him and Noé Hernández, during breaks between scenes, to be amazed by the different obstacles they overcame that January 8, 2016, in Los Mochis.
“I don’t know if this fear, this terror made them enter a process of acting automatically, without really realizing what was happening; simply going into autopilot,” he says.
“That was a bit my initial view. But after going through this arc, after empathizing with this character, putting myself in his shoes, and seeing the decisions he made, seeing very calculatedly what they tried to do, how they sheltered themselves to hand over these two characters to the authorities, I said: these guys really made very specific decisions to do and fulfill their duty.”
Regarding the reception the film has received during these first days, he states: “In Mexico, they are very happy to see that finally the good guys win. That draws a lot of attention, and it is greatly liked. That stories are told about Mexicans who did the right thing, Mexicans who did their job with honor, with honesty. And that the institutions did their job correctly,” he points out.
“I think that is worth highlighting. Without romanticizing, and without being naive either. I also think it is worth emphasizing and underlining.”
Alfonso Herrera is surprised to hear that, four months after its premiere, La casa de los espíritus is still in the top 10 most-watched series on the Prime Video platform in Chile.
The Mexican actor is the main figure of the cast of the fiction based on Isabel Allende’s novel, as he plays the family patriarch and it was decided that he would portray him from adulthood to old age, covering all the decades of the story.
The project brought him many joys, but few like the one he recently experienced. Recently, he says, he was on a Zoom video call with Allende and other cast members. The writer shared a phrase that illustrates her satisfaction with the result: “Watch the series, it’s easier.”
“It was incredible to finally meet her and know her as so wild, so cool, so beyond good and evil. I loved her personality, I loved the chat we had. I loved Isabel, she’s the best.”
And he adds: “I even felt like having a little tequila with her.”
But the Mexican star’s career does not stop. Today he is filming El enemigo del pueblo, his new collaboration with filmmaker Luis Estrada, where – according to him – he plays two characters. The director of La dictadura perfecta (2014) tells the story of a young high school student with the Legionaries of Christ who embarks on an anarchist dream and joins the Zapatista revolution.
“It is a coming of age about a 17-year-old boy and takes place between late 1993 and early 1994. At that time in Mexico many things happen: the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Zapatista armed uprising. It shows everything that happens at that moment through this 16-year-old boy.” An exercise proposed through “gunpowder and Luis’s very sharp vision,” he points out.
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Its debut is scheduled for 2027 on Netflix.
